Katy Wheeler

ORGANISERS at Sunderland’s biggest home-grown festival have come up with an all-weather back-up plan.

Split Festival bosses have applied for a licence to use the Ocean Park fairground in Seaburn for the weekend of August 9 and 10.

However, despite rumours that this year’s festival would be moved from its base in Mowbray Park, organisers are reassuring gig-goers that the concrete Seaburn site will only be used in the worst of weather conditions.

Martyn McFadden, from the Split team, said: “This is just a back-up insurance plan so we can make sure the event will still go ahead, but it would have to be a Noah’s Ark situation for us to use it.

“The weather was really bad after Split Festival in 2012, so much so, that we couldn’t load out for a week because the ground was so wet.

“If that had happened on the weekend of the festival, we would have had to cancel.”

After a break last year, Split announced it was back for 2014 with a bang.

As well as moving to a city centre location from Ashbrooke Sports Ground, the event announced its biggest headliner yet – Dizzee Rascal.